How to Steal a Broomstick
by ejosephinemachine
Summary: Ginny Weasley wants to fly. Ginny Weasley isn't the sort of person to accept defeat. Even at age six.
1. Chapter 1

It was very important that she be quick. She was only going to have a short window to pull this off. She had planned it to perfection, for days now, but there was something very different about actually doing it. If she got caught, if anyone saw her, she would suffer for it. It had to be now.

She was going to steal a broomstick.

Not steal, not really. If everything went to plan, no one would ever know she had taken it. She had tried to follow the rules, she really had. She had watched Charlie, Fred and George soar and swoop around on their broomsticks. Bill had never loved flying, and Percy always seemed to have something 'better' to do. They had even let Ron try a few times, which hadn't ended well, but never Ginny. Mum didn't want her to, she knew that. She thought it was dangerous, and Ginny knew it was, but that was part of the reason she was so desperate to try it. The one time Mum had let her ride Fred's broom, after Ginny's whining and despite Fred's protestations, she had forced Ginny to stay about a metre from the ground and had followed her around the whole time. It hadn't looked anything like the way the others flew, and it had been then, sitting on the broom, fuming, that Ginny knew the only way she was ever going to fly, was by 'borrowing' a broom when no one was looking.

Dad was at work, Mum was busy dealing with the acrid purple smoke that had filled the second floor of the Burrow after Fred and George had done something that they weren't willing to admit to. Pulling on the bright red boots that her mum had just scrubbed clean after an unfortunate shortcut through a substantial amount of mud had rendered them dark brown, she took a deep breath and nodded to herself, feeling determined.

She knew exactly where to go, tiptoeing down the stairs, avoiding the second last one which was prone to creaking. She padded silently across to the back door. Next to the latch hung a row of keys which, with the help of a nearby ladle, she managed to knock from their hook and catch deftly. The door squeaked terribly if pulled open all the way so she flattened herself against the doorframe as she squeezed through the slightest crack. She counted off the obstacles like checkpoints. She had made it down the stairs. She had gotten the keys. She had got out the door. This was going well, she thought to herself, but there was a long way to go before she achieved her goal. She wasn't flying yet.

The next challenge came in the form of the shed in which the brooms were locked and the very particular knack needed to open it. This was the most dangerous part of the plan because the shed was directly overlooked by the window of Fred and George's bedroom, and there was a chance that Mum, in trying to air out the smoke, might just look down and see Ginny doing something that she absolutely shouldn't do.

"C'mon! Please, just work!" She hissed at the lock, certain that it knew she wasn't supposed to be out here and was just being difficult deliberately. However, the lock had met its match in this particular child and soon it sprung open, and she had simply to pull open the door to victory. She hadn't given much thought to the question of whose broom it was that she would steal, as long as it flew. However, now that she was here, the sharp scent of polish mixing with an earthy, airy wood smell, she saw that they weren't just things to fly on, these weren't just sticks that floated. These were magical.

She stood for a while, transfixed by the smell, brushing her fingers against the shining handle of the nearest broom. The air almost seemed to hum with her anticipation, as if the brooms themselves were murmuring, whispering, for her to pick one of them. She could tell Fred's broom from George's, just as she could tell the boys themselves apart. George's was softer, better polished, a little less beaten, whereas she could practically see the grooves of Fred's hands on the handle of his, and could imagine the hundreds of bludgers, and players, that had crashed into it. Charlie's broom was worn in a different way to the others', it seemed to have been cherished, loved and, though it had been through a fair few Quidditch matches, it looked happy. It looked like a happy broom. Ginny thought that if it had been a dog, it would have been the sort to follow its master around, devotedly.

She didn't want to take Charlie's broom. It wasn't because he knew a lot more hexes than Fred and George, though he did. She didn't think he would hex her, but something told her not to. That broom was Charlie's, and his alone.

She decided that George's broom was the best bet and, grasping it with determination, she pulled it free from the wall. It was heavier than she thought and she lost her balance for a moment, toppling backwards and almost knocking over a shelf. Regaining her balance, she quickly made her way out of the shed and away from the house, up to the enclosed paddock that would offer her the most shelter for her clandestine activities. She realised, about a minute into the walk, that the broom had not been designed with someone as small as her in mind and, as a result of this, she was finding it hard to stop the tail of the broom from dragging along the ground. She tried desperately to lift the tail, but it was a struggle and she was glad when she was eventually standing, with the broom on the ground in front of her, trying to summon up the courage to ask the broom to rise.

She had seen this, several times, when Dad taught Fred and George, and most recently, Ron how to summon a broom. You just had to sit it on the ground, stand beside it, and, with your hand out, tell it to go up. It would be easy, she reassured that little doubting voice in the back of her mind. She didn't want to try if nothing was going to happen, she didn't want to fail. What if the broom didn't like her?

Then she furrowed her brow, told herself that she had come too far to give up just because she was scared, and, before she could think about anything other than how wonderful it would be to fly, she held out her hand and shouted "UP!"


	2. Chapter 2

Ginny would later develop a theory that during the big moments in a person's life, time slows down, and the moments themselves become bigger. However, at age six, she had yet to collect enough life experiences to make up theories about the important ones. So, this moment, this big, big moment, seemed to last as long as her entire life put together. She felt, rather than saw, the broom respond, and her heart leapt, in either shock or joy, when the broom was suddenly, amazingly, in her hand.

She was both sure that she had always known it would work and entirely surprised by it, and the result of this was that she stood, frozen, for a long time. She wasn't sure if she was waiting. To an onlooker, it would seem like she was simply waiting to be caught. It would look like she was too afraid to fly. If there was one thing Ginny Weasley wasn't experiencing in this moment, it was fear. She was a thousand things, but she was not afraid.

As she often found, the best approach to any task was just to do it, before the thoughts of failure overwhelmed you. She had planned for long enough to know that there was only a limited time Mum would be distracted by Fred and George and if she returned to the kitchen and saw the broom shed's key was gone... well, it wasn't worth thinking about.

She already felt like an expert in the technique of riding a broom. She had seen Charlie, Fred, George and Ron all do it, she had thought over the motions, the kick to lift you off the ground, the best place to hold the handle, how not to fall off. She knew it all. But she was only six, and the image of her gracefully, masterfully lifting off of the ground and flying away, like a professional Quidditch player, was altogether different from the reality of a child trying to fly a broom far too big for her. She could feel every tremor in the air around her, as if the wind itself were willing her on. There was an interminable moment when she had stomped her little boot into the ground and tried to force it upwards and she lifted off, as high as she would have if she was jumping without the broom. She had experienced this before, she had jumped and hoped that she would fly, but she always came back down.

This time, she kept rising. She flew. It was not by any means a beautiful sight, but the broom rose, and this time, it felt very different from the controlled, boring flight she had been permitted by her mother. There was something wild and free in her ascent. She felt like she would never stop. She wanted to keep heading up, until the clouds were far beneath her. She couldn't stop, not with this feeling in her chest, not with... absolutely no idea how to get down. This could be problematic. She pushed forward, changing the angle of the broom, and felt herself stop. She knew, from instinct and knowledge, that tilting forward would take her into a dive, but she didn't know how to control it. She turned to look at the house, the Burrow was not easy to miss, both from its individual character and the fact that it was the only house nearby. She didn't have long before Mum would be looking for her. Living with Fred and George really made a person suspicious of prolonged silences and absences.

Okay, she thought to herself, just go down... Downwards, please...

Nothing happened. Disappointed, but not surprised, she summoned all of her courage, a not inconsiderable amount and shouted.

"DOWN!"

The ensuing plummet took her breath away and tore at her stomach but when a noise escaped her, it sounded a lot more like a laugh than a scream. She had a second to wonder why she was laughing on the way to her death and then she felt the strangest feeling she had ever experienced. Just like when Mum managed to stop a dropped plate before it hit the ground with her wand, Ginny felt herself stop. She wouldn't have been able to have stopped herself if she had tried, but something, she could only imagine it was the broom itself not wanting to be broken into splinters, had stopped and she floated, almost bouncing, for a second before the broom slumped onto the ground, as if worn out by its trial.

Ginny was not worn out though. If anything, the short, sharp drop had only given her an appetite for more and she knew, like she knew little else, that she wanted to fly again. When she had straightened herself up, she stood once again over the broom, not caring whether she was caught in the act but knowing that she had to feel that wonderful sensation again. The broom seemed to remember that she was not the most experienced flyer and was a little reluctant to rise to her wishes, but soon, she was ready to kick off. She had seen it a thousand times, and knew what was required of her, but her legs weren't long enough and she had to cling on quickly as she almost kicked herself off the broom, it almost leaving her behind as it rose.

She wasn't easily left behind, her brothers had learned that early on in life, and she felt herself leave the ground. This time was already showing improvement on the last, it was more stable, steady and controlled. The broom was still too big for her, but this time it seemed, or she seemed, to understand more how to fly. It might not have been her broom, but it knew her better and responded to her touch better than before. She dealt better with the wind blowing in her face, it didn't make her scared, it made her strong. She could fly right in the face of this wind, and stay in control of her broom. She didn't rocket upwards, but spiralled, circling the ground and working her way around the perimeters of the paddock. She was trying to teach herself to fly, and there was a sensible way to do things. Learning to walk before you could run, so to speak.

As it turned out, sensible and stable progress wasn't any kind of fun and Ginny soon grew bored. She was the sort of girl who could always find a way to amuse herself, and she had wanted to fly for too long to get bored by it now. She started to make sharp turns, flinging herself forward and then doubling back, then flying sharply upwards and down. The jolting, swooping sensation that accompanied each movement was enough to convince Ginny that there was nothing in the world quite as fun as flying. She knew that she never wanted to stop flying, but she also knew that her Mum would make sure that she never so much as jumped a foot off the ground if she saw her now. So, reluctantly, she descended, this time managing to dismount the broom without having to jump, or end up flat on the ground.

She pulled the broom back along the grass towards the shed, knowing somehow that she wouldn't be caught out now. She wouldn't be that unlucky. She had already done the thing that she wasn't supposed to do, it would be terrible luck to be spotted while she was trying to cover it up. She put George's broom back, and only then, as she breathed out, satisfied, did she notice that the broom was showing obvious signs of use. A little mud on one side, a few bits of grass stuck between the twigs that made up the tail. She did her best to clean it up, but she knew that if she was going to do this again, she would have to be more careful. That was going to be the secret to her success. She just had to never let them know she was stealing from them.

It was foolproof.


	3. Chapter 3

It wasn't exactly easy to have a secret n the Weasley household. Whatever you did someone was there to witness it, and, being both the youngest and the only girl, she received even more attention from her watchful mother than perhaps her brothers were given.

Even still, Ginny had one. A secret, that is. For months now, she had been involved in the most daring thing she had ever done. She was a thief. A Broomstick Thief. And she was about to be caught.

Pressing herself against the damp wood of the side of the shed, she tried to steady her breathing. She could hear her mum walking towards her, now only a short while away. This was how she was going to die. This was it. Her mum would find her, stolen broom in hand, and she would do that terrifying thing where her face seemed to harden and it was as if her had sucked all the air out of the world in preparation for a telling-off to end all telling-offs.

She had gotten too confident. That was what had went wrong. She had been drawn in and fooled by the wonderful feelings of soaring through the air, being caught and lifted by the currents of wind around her. She had forgotten the time, and now her mum had noticed she wasn't in her room, and come to look for her, and she was going to find her.

But that didn't mean she was going to make it easy.

She eased her way along the side of the shed, forcing herself between the wall and the boundary fence on the other side. Maybe if she just curled up here, her mum might miss her, as if her red hair could ever have been missed. She knew there was no way to hide herself, but she tried to wedge the broom through the slats in the fence, hoping that she could just pretend that she had been hiding behind the shed for absolutely no reason. That could work.

"Ginny? Ginny! Where are you?" The first thing that Ginny noted was that she didn't sound furious, more concerned and perhaps a little inconvenienced, but she hadn't yet realised that her young daughter had been stealing and lying and flying brooms in secret for months now. The next thing that Ginny realised was that her mother was almost at the shed. She only had seconds left. She took a deep breath, trying to savour what would be the last seconds of a glorious world where she had succeeded in stealing a broom

She let go of the broom, and closed her eyes, waiting for the inevitable shriek. She didn't hear it. Instead she heard, and then felt, something hit her in the chest. Something solid.

Opening her eyes, wondering if the shed had collapsed on her, adding another item to the list of things that she would be shouted at for when she was found. It took her a second to orientate herself. She was definitely not where she had been before. It didn't take long for her to realise that she was, somehow, on top of the shed, lying flat against the scratchy, splintered wood, hearing her mother huff and sigh only inches away.

"Oh for goodness sake! What on earth are those boys doing, leaving a broom out like-" Ginny heard a grunt and a scraping sound as her mum reached into the gap where she had been only seconds before and pulled the broomstick free from its meagre concealment. "-that!" She finished.

Ginny wasn't sure how this had happened, but she certainly wasn't going to ruin it by making any sort of noise. She lay against the wood, blowing away a small insect that was making its gradual progress towards her. Her mum unlocked the broom shed, put away the broom, and headed back to the house, grumbling about the boys.

Then it was time to run.

She practically threw herself from the roof to the fence and then to the ground. Stumbling a little on the landing and pitching forwards, she fell into the soft grass and mud, feeling the knees of her tights dampening as she scrambled up, and sprinted towards the house. She didn't have time to think as she snatched up a bucket from the side of the coop, dumped the contents in the grass behind a post and stomped breathlessly up to the kitchen door. Her mum could only have been in there a few seconds, a minute at most but she was already shouting on her brothers. Fred and George could be heard huffing and moaning exaggeratedly as she stomped down the stairs and Ron was looking mutinous as he reached the kitchen, obviously having just woken up.

"What is it, Mum?" Ron asked, dodging away from his mum's attempts to give him a good-morning kiss.

"Have you seen your sister? Ginny?"

"Oh, Ginny? And there I was thinking you meant our other sister!" Fred grumbled.

"Ginny? Oh yeah, I remember her, short, red hair, freckles, looks exactly like us? Do you mean that one?"

"George!" Her mother's tone was unmistakable, and her brothers all dropped their faces.

"She's right there, Mum!" Ron finally supplied, pointing at Ginny, who was wiping nervously at her knees by the door.

The three boys started back up the stairs, obviously annoyed at being called down from their beds to point out their sister who was standing about ten feet away from their mother, but their mum wasn't finished with them yet. Looking perplexedly away from Ginny, who knew that wasn't the end of the matter of her disappearance,

"By the way, which of you left your broom out in the rain? I had to put it back in the shed. It could've gotten lost, or snapped, or blown away. Try and be a little more careful, your father worked hard to buy you those brooms."

It was as if she had said that someone was dead, the three faces turned in unison, paling beneath the red hair and they started towards the door in a panicked dash towards the broom shed, wondering whose broom it was and whether it had been damaged.

Ginny hoped that they would simply dismiss it as a mistake when they realised that the brooms were all safe and unharmed. It would show no sign of having been left out all night because, of course, it hadn't been. A more pressing concern descended on her now, in the form of her mum.

"I was looking for you. Where were you?"

She raised the bucket, her shield.

"Chickens. They needed feeding, I was up, thought I'd do it..."

"I thought you hated the chickens. You've never once offered to feed them!"

Both of those things were true. She did hate the chickens, and she had never offered to feed them. She hated the smell, the stray feathers that got on everything, she hated those chickens.

"I love the chickens! Love them!" she heard herself say, hearing her voice squeak and noticing in the back of a pan hanging up that she had a leaf in her hair. Disguising it as scratching her head, she pulled the leaf quickly out and hoped, desperately that it was the only one.

"All right... You can feed them from now on, then. I hate the smell."

Even the thought of having to feed those disgusting, smelly chickens for the rest of her life was not enough to dampen her spirits. She had gotten away with the most daring thing she had ever done. She was quite a talented thief.

And she was definitely, if the way she had magically ended up on top of the shed was any indication, a witch. She had always thought she would be, she had even done magic once before, but she hadn't been entirely convinced that it had been her and not Ron that had fixed that broken window, and this time had definitely, undeniably been her. She had done magic.

Even though she couldn't tell her mum, or anyone else, why she spent the rest of that day with a massive grin fixed on her face, she couldn't help feeling utterly buoyant. Nothing could lessen the wonderful feeling in her chest. Still, she tried to reason with herself. Perhaps she had gotten away with it, but that didn't mean she could get complacent. She would be more careful next time, she would be cautious and make sure that she didn't come close to getting caught again.

She would try and be careful, she honestly would, but Ginny Weasley was not, by nature, a careful girl. She found, increasingly, over the years, that a big part of the fun of flying was the feeling of almost getting caught.

She was such a Gryffindor.


End file.
